How many times do teachers assign writing in science class only to be exasperated by their students' lack of writing skills? They often have difficulty making claims and using evidence; instead of explaining their reasoning, they state, "Just because." But teaching writing isn't just for English/language arts (ELA) class. Over the past two years,…

A developmental writing scale for timed essay-writing performance was created on the basis of automatically computed indicators of writing fluency, word choice, and conventions of standard written English. In a large-scale data collection effort that involved a national sample of more than 12,000 students from 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade,…

At a time when many teenagers are consumed by such activities as text-messaging, blogging, and social networking, more middle and high school students than in the past have mastered the formal "basic" writing skills needed to express ideas or share information, national assessment results released last week show. But just small proportions--33…